Saturday, January 23, 2010

I Am Jelly Donut!!

I admit I stole the post title from my friend Eileeno's blog, but I figured I'd give you the hilarious English translation of J.F.K.'s oft-disputed but nonetheless famous gaffe from his speech in Berlin for the starter to my Berlin blogpost.

It only took us three months, but we finally managed to make it out of France and stumble on over to nearby Berlin to meet up with my buddies Buddah, Molly, Eileeno and Eileen's friend Lawrence.

Save from the shock that Berlin had about two feet of snow and we had packed for Parisian drizzle, Berlin was terrific. I thought it was interesting that most of the happening stuff is in what used to be East Berlin. I guess after the wall fell, they took the run-down East Berlin and used it as a blank canvas to remake the city. So now it is peppered with hip little hofbräuhauses, restaurants, and cafes and it's where everyone flocks to.

Speaking of the wall, we found an old stretch about a mile long that is still standing. Nowadays it has been turned into compilation of murals, of which my favorite was the two old guys getting hot and heavy. I did a little digging and it turns out it's L. Brezhnev, in a lip lock with the former head of East Germany, E. Honecker.

The other highlight of this whirlwind tour of Berlin was a visit to the Pergamon Museum. I would never have thought to go here, but Eileeno who is a bit more of a planner had luckily put this "can't-miss" item on our itinerary. Turns out Berlin has one of the most incredible museums of Greek history in the world. An entire ancient Greek temple from the city of Pergamon (in present-day Turkey) has been reconstructed in the museum along with a host of relics from other parts of the ancient world like the Ishtar Gate from the city of Babylon. Aside from being completely unexpected it was also just really impressive. All these amazing Greek artifacts landed in Germany as the result of some long forgotten treaty between Turkey and Germany, but I can only imagine Turkey got the raw end of this "treaty" (I think the Native Americans know what I'm saying).

We're back in Paris now for the time being but we're getting a little more into our international traveler mode these days. We just booked tickets for a quick weekend trip to Bruges in February followed in short order by a four day trip to see Budapest. After that we're not sure where to head, but we're thinking Lisbon, or maybe Malaga or Greece. Somewhere warm to escape the winter, so if you have any ideas leave em in the comments. À bientôt.

4 comments:

great photos, JR! I need to start using those little photo doohickeys for my own blog. It was great to see you and Jess in Berlin, although I realized too late that none of us ever ordered the legendary jelly donut.Oh and I vote Jordan for a warm vacation- I've heard it's amazing.